Elkin: If I Had to, I’d Expel Jews

Likud MK explains why he would carry out orders to evict Jews from their homes.

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Maayana Miskin, 21/12/12 12:48

MK Ze'ev Elkin

Israel news photo: Flash 90

MK Zev Elkin of Likud talked to Arutz Sheva about refusing orders after Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) party head Naftali Bennet raised the issue by saying that if he were ordered to expel Jews from their homes, he would ask his commander to release him from duty. Bennett did not advocate refusing to obey orders and was himself a member of the IDF elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit, but candidates from other parties were quick to seize the opportunity to claim that he did..

Elkin related that he, too, would request a release from duty – but that if one were not forthcoming, he would carry out the eviction order.

His decision does not indicate a support for such orders, he said, and he plans to use his status as an MK from the ruling party to ensure that such orders are not given in the first place.

However, he said, once the orders come through they should be followed. “I think the army needs to be beyond political debate,” he explained. “Just as I vehemently oppose those with left-wing views who refuse to serve in the IDF for ideological reasons, so too those on the right who declare that they would refuse orders.”

Elkin said that as a rule, he would be willing to cross lines and even go to jail for the sake of Jewish settlement in Israel. “I’m ready to sit in jail. There’s no shame in going to jail for the land of Israel,” he declared.

“I almost went to jail in the USSR for Zionism. It doesn’t bother me,” he added. What bothers him, he said, is the blow that refusing orders gives to the IDF’s status as a national organization.

“If everyone decides not to carry out any order he disagrees with for ideological reasons, we won’t have an army,” he said. “We must not reach that point.”